The real-life competition between Capcom and SNK ended permanently some weeks ago, when SNK officially closed its doors. One of the grandfathers of fighting games has passed away, but it's great that SNK's progeny--dozens of memorable fighting-game characters--live on, along with about as many from Capcom's camp, in the new Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium. The PlayStation 2 version of this 2D fighting game is essentially identical to the Dreamcast version that was recently released in Japan. As such, this review is mostly the same as that of the Dreamcast import, only it mentions a few points of interest regarding the PlayStation 2 version in particular.

Capcom vs. SNK 2 is an arcade port of the sequel to last year's fighting game that brought together many of the most popular characters from both Capcom's and SNK's fighting games. For fans of one company's games or the other's, this was unthinkable: the bitterest of rivals--not the characters, but the companies--had joined forces. About a year after the release of Capcom vs. SNK (available only in arcades and for the Dreamcast), the sense of shock may be gone, but it's still a solid 2D fighting game. The sequel is similar. Like most of Capcom's fighting games, it's an incremental enhancement to its predecessor and introduces some welcome new features but just barely enough of them. Capcom vs. SNK 2 still provides plenty of lasting value, especially for those who haven't played the first game, and its appearance on the PlayStation 2 promises to give it a lot more exposure than the first game ever had. Besides, unlike the Dreamcast, the PlayStation 2 doesn't have a lot of good 2D fighting games available for it yet, so Capcom vs. SNK 2 can be easily recommended by default.

Capcom vs. SNK 2 adds some new characters, some new moves, some new game mechanics, some new backgrounds, and some new music. There's a lot of the same graphics, same sounds, and same gameplay. The changes in the game will have a more significant impact depending on how serious you are about your 2D fighters. The new additions make the game technically superior to the first, but not necessarily better enough to merit purchase if you've already got the first one--let alone the half-baked Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 Pro, an intermediary rerelease of the first game with a couple of throwaway characters added and all the hidden characters already unlocked.

Depending on how you count, Capcom vs. SNK 2 adds about a half a dozen new characters over the original. There are about 40 different characters available in the game, though of course not all of these are completely unique. Some of the most exciting new additions to the roster include Eagle, the British stick fighter who dates all the way back to the original Street Fighter game, and Haohmaru, the cocky sword-wielding samurai from SNK's Samurai Shodown series, whose katana would presumably give him an unfair advantage. Fortunately, other characters have no problem deflecting Haohmaru's long, slow slashes with their forearms. Other notable additions include the kung fu fighter Yun, from Street Fighter III, and Rock Howard, the bastard son of Geese Howard who first appeared in SNK's Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves. Some of the other new characters, such as the over-the-hill martial artist Ryuhaku Todo, from SNK's Art of Fighting, and Maki, a rip-off of SNK's Mai Shiranui who appeared in the sequel to Final Fight, are surprising additions to the lineup, but not necessarily good ones. Capcom and SNK fans alike will probably find that they can think of a few equally rare characters that they would have rather seen in the game.

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Review

Alas, Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, your time is spent. We had some fun times--remember when Sentinel was steamrolling everyone?--but now it's over. Developer Capcom has dug you an early grave to make way for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, the $40 follow-up that, for some, has come much too soon. Regardless of how you feel, the game is here, and it is the superior version, with new characters, stages, and rebalanced gameplay. Of course, it's also just as challenging as before and can break your heart with a single combo. It's mean, it's flashy, but most importantly, it's Marvel, baby!

Watch enough high-level matches in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and you see a few definite styles emerge. Players gravitate toward Wolverine, Wesker, She-Hulk, and others for their ability to relentlessly assault opponents and lock them down in close-range combat. Even Dormammu, with his fancy black holes and energy pillars, spends most of his time teleporting into melee range. The rush-down game has stolen the spotlight, and now Ultimate wants to make it share. The game has dedicated almost half of the new roster to favor zoning, or fighting at a distance, in the hopes of cracking the original's single, all-encompassing strategy.

Joining the roster are 12 new fighters, many of whom personify the game's overall shift in focus. Together with the original cast, they raise the game's collection to an impressive 48 fighters--just eight shy of Marvel vs. Capcom 2's total. Some of these newcomers, such as Iron Fist and Nova, are hard-hitting, straightforward brawlers. However, roughly half favor fighting at a distance or with unorthodox tactics. Consider Doctor Strange, the sorcerer supreme whose numerous projectiles range from homing disks to a fireball that can ricochet across the screen before striking its target. His long-range antics aren't new to the series, but they were rarely used in the previous game during competitive play.

Of course, this shift won't happen overnight; players naturally stick to what they know. But as the game and the community grow, hopefully these new styles will take root. In the meantime, there are some other core design changes to explore. Team aerial combos, another rarely used mechanic in MVC3, have been granted extra incentive. Now, the direction in which you tag out your character causes different effects, such as giving you an additional super meter. X-factor, the game's comeback mechanic, has also been scaled back in power and normalized across the cast. It can even be activated in the air.

The returning characters received a lot of love in this new release as well. The strongest characters haven't been brought down; instead, the rest of the cast has been brought up to match their strength. These changes manifest in new moves for some characters and new properties for existing moves for others. For instance, Magneto has a new move that physically drags his opponent around the screen, while Shuma-Gorath's throw now drains super meter from its opponent. Take a look at your old favorites, and chances are you'll discover new tricks that weren't possible before.

Luckily, you're not on your own to discover these changes. The game's mission mode, which teaches new players the basic moves and combos for the cast, has been updated to accommodate all these changes. The 12 new characters have their own mission sets, while the veterans' missions have been updated. Unfortunately, this mode still has issues in the way it presents information, so if you don't know your Gram from your Ragtime Shot, then you'll constantly have to pause the game and dive into the menu to see the move's input. Being able to watch a demonstration of the current mission would also have been appreciated.

Aside from the tweaks to mission mode, the gameplay offerings in Ultimate are nearly as limited as in its predecessor. There's a new Galactus mode that lets you hop in the driver's seat of the game's final boss. However, stomping through the single-player arcade mode gets old fast. The Shadow Mode DLC is altogether absent from Ultimate. Its likely replacement is the upcoming Heroes and Heralds mode, which Capcom has announced will be released "postlaunch" as a free DLC. The mode has you collecting cards and assigns them to your three-person team to unlock new bonuses and abilities. For now, however, its absence is felt, and the game's variety suffers for it.

One feature that fans were dying for in the original release that has made it into Ultimate is spectator mode during online play. No longer are you confined to watching two sets of life bars tick down while awaiting your turn; now you can see all the action for yourself. Ultimate also brings with it the online performance updates the original received, leading to a more consistent connection rate. Sadly, online still lacks the replay support enjoyed by Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition; a feature which could have served as an excellent teaching tool.

Ultimately, Ultimate is still a monster hiding under an attractive coat of flashy combos and familiar characters. It may feel inviting at first, but sink a little deeper, and you discover a game in which victory and defeat hinge on a fine line. It's a high-risk, high-reward system that buries you in a brightly colored light show on the slightest misstep. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is unquestionably the superior version, and while its feature set still feels lacking compared to other available fighters, the series' unique blend of structured insanity remains strong.

Samurai Shodown III Review

Shodown III held its own in the arcades. But until the release of King of Fighters '95 and Fatal Fury Real Bout for the Saturn, SNK has had trouble converting its games to the home platform. The burning question: Would Shodown III safely make the transition? The answer: Samurai Shodown III for the Playstation is really good, but not really great.

Some animation frames from the arcade version of the game have been cut, and the gameplaying speed on the Playstation is somewhat slower. It's a solid game - that is, as long as players are willing to deal with the excruciatingly long loading time. Even so, the gameplay is still there - along with vivid colors and SNK's detailed character art and backgrounds.

It would seem that the name of the game in Samurai Shodown is patience. For players who like to whale on the buttons, prepare yourselves for a big time beating. Players should instead look for openings and slice away. Since this game doesn't really have a combo system, players have to string together moves slowly, methodically countering their opponent's swordplay. This can lead to some long bouts - a departure from today's fighters, which are designed to guzzle quarters as fast as possible before going to the consoles.

Changes from Samurai Shodown II are many. Each character now has an alter ego with tweaked moves, and players can also choose among the many difficulty settings. For example, new players can make their character always block; more experienced players can eliminate blocking; and there's even an option that gives players a full desperation move meter throughout a match. These options are a nice touch - especially for those who are otherwise discouraged by the move complexity in the fighting game genre.

Those who loved the arcade game version of Samurai Shodown III will be happy with this conversion. Those who have never played the game should give it a try - they'll probably like it, provided they can stand the loading time.

Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Review

Dating back to the 1950s, Godzilla is the undisputed king of movie monsters. This radioactive lizard is a world-renowned icon who may be campy but certainly deserves every ounce of his fame, and Japan's Toho Studios has created literally dozens of films with him in the starring role. In this day and age it's sometimes painfully apparent that proud Godzilla is really just a man in a rubber suit, but even after all these decades, you still can tell that tremendous effort and artistry must have gone into the making of these classic sci-fi films. The most well known of all of Godzilla's appearances has to be 1968's Destroy All Monsters, sort of a battle royal for Godzilla and his many terrific adversaries. It's this movie that was the inspiration for a 3D fighting game that hit the GameCube last year and has now been ported to the Xbox with few noticeable changes. In it, players can assume the roles of nearly a dozen giant monsters and try to defeat all their opponents, with little regard for the cities in which the battles take place. It's a great concept, and Godzilla nuts will find it irresistibly appealing. Unfortunately, Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee turns out to be quite shallow, and while it could easily tide over Godzilla fans for a while, it ultimately relies on the strength of its license to compensate for its weakness as a game.

Destroy All Monsters Melee is simple and has elements in common with other multiplayer-focused beat-'em-up games like Capcom's Power Stone series or the recent Kung Fu Chaos. Generally speaking, though, it lacks these other games' smooth frame rates, its controls are pretty clunky, its collision detection doesn't look quite right, and the pacing of the action is a bit slow. Then again, none of those other games had Godzilla in them.

A number of different modes of play are available in Destroy All Monsters Melee, and while you might be inclined to cut straight to the four-player melee mode with a group of pals, you'll probably need to spend some time in the single-player adventure mode first. That's because initially just four monsters are selectable (which is one more than on the GameCube, actually): Godzilla (the '90s-era version), the spiny Anguirus, the buglike Megalon, and the evil cyborg Gigan. The rest must be unlocked by repeatedly slogging through the adventure mode, in which you'll always take on the tough Mecha Godzilla as the final boss. Beating him, much less getting to him, may prove to be overly difficult for those who aren't very experienced with fighting games. Unless you're playing on the easy setting, the computer fights dirty, often making a beeline for offscreen power-ups. Plus, you have only three chances to get through the adventure mode, and if you don't make it, you'll have to start over. There's also a versus mode for two players, a survival mode that puts more time pressure on you to defeat AI-controlled monsters, a team battle where you're only trying to defeat opposing team members, and a destruction mode where you try to wreak more havoc within a city than your opponent.

The Xbox version adds a single-player destruction mode that's pretty pointless, hooks for downloadable content, as well as a couple of new levels to fight in and another unlockable monster. While the game has a good number of modes, your goal in most of these is to pound your enemy (or enemies) into submission using your monster's various attacks. Battles generally take place in urban environments that look boundless but in fact have artificial borders that confine the action to a relatively small area. You're otherwise free to run (or in some cases fly) about the area as you see fit, knocking down buildings as you go.

Beyond giving you some freedom of movement, Destroy All Monsters Melee functions like a conventional, rudimentary 3D fighting game. There isn't a ton of variation between the different controllable monsters when you get past their distinct appearances, and a few of them are essentially identical. As any of the monsters, you can execute several different attacks at the touch of a button, and you can also block, fire a beam weapon, and pick up and toss your opponent. Throws, overhead hits, and sweeps can all be used to crack an opposing monster's defenses, and each monster also has a number of special moves that are extremely easy to execute just by moving the analog stick in a direction while pressing a button. Many attacks in Destroy All Monsters Melee cause the monster on the receiving end to go flying, and should you find yourself knocked down, you can execute a couple of recovery moves to keep the opponent from pursuing his attack. The frequent knockdowns add some drama to the proceedings, but since the game is filled with lumbering creatures that aren't exactly quick on their feet, you may find yourself annoyed at spending more time flopping around on the pavement than standing toe-to-toe with another monster.

War Gods Review

Have you ever come across a game that you really wanted to like, but for some strange reason you just couldn't? That's how I felt about War Gods. Let me put it this way: I'm a huge fan of the Mortal Kombat series, and War Gods possesses enough similarities to make it seem like an old friend at times. It also includes enough changes to give the Mortal Kombat fighting experience a "new" feel. Sounds good, right? Well...let's just say that, ultimately, the new feel I got was one of irritation and disappointment.

The story behind War Gods goes something like this: A really, really long time ago, a spaceship carrying crazy, life-giving ore crashed into the Earth, spreading small chunks of the magic rocks across the planet's surface. Throughout time, various humans have found the rocks and instantly evolved in War Gods. Now they're fighting each other to gather all the stones in the quest to become the ultimate super-warrior. Indeed. It's a dubious mission worthy of this so-so MK clone.

If you've played any of the Mortal Kombat games, adjusting to War Gods should be pretty easy, should you decide to bother. All of the basic moves, like uppercuts, sweeps, and roundhouse kicks, are exactly the same as MK. Moreover, many of the special moves are done in a very similar fashion. The only real difference War Gods can claim is its 3-D environment, which mainly allows the characters to sidestep out of the way of projectiles. War Gods also sports MK-inspired combos, the only appreciable difference being that the combos are longer here. Perfecting these ten-hit combos is just a matter of simple memorization, and they ensure that experienced players will take up to a third of their opponent's life every time they land a successful attack. The game also has fatalities, which range from completely pathetic (Anubis' sarcophagus drop) to completely insane (CY-5's UFO Abduction). These fatalities are extremely hard to do on the N64 controller, as many of them involve simultaneously hitting three buttons and other finger-twisting feats.

On the upside, War Gods' graphics are pretty good. The 3-D arena looks sharp, the characters are fairly detailed, and the backgrounds look good as well. This is probably the first N64 fighting game to hit the market that actually shows off some of the power of this system. The only graphical element that falls short is the blood, which flies out of the character's bodies in huge dollops and manages to look pretty ridiculous in the process. The sound in War Gods is some of the best to come from an N64 game. The distorted, low-quality sound that plagued Midway's Mortal Kombat Trilogy has been replaced with crisp, clean speech and sound effects.

If you're a fan of Mortal Kombat, War Gods is an interesting (albeit unrelated) footnote to the MK legacy. It's a very strange mix, which may leave some feeling unfulfilled. While it has just enough of the MK feel to give it familiarity, the differences will drive purists crazy. However, it is a solid fighter, and probably the best that the N64 has to offer in the fighting arena.

Tekken 2 Review

Wickedly sick action, amazingly fast gameplay, mother of all.... What more is there to say? Tekken 2 rules! The undeniable king of fighting games is here, and it's time to break bones and necks - not to mention the controller after Angel Kazuya toasts you alive with her eye laser.

This sequel features a variety of new moves, characters, backgrounds, and other improvements. Characters are more detailed, and Namco has imbued them with new features, like head movement. In addition to having twice as many moves, combos, and throws, most characters also now have at least three different ten-string combos. In addition to the original selection of moves, "counter throws" have been added, allowing a few of the characters to grab an inbound punch or kick and perform a defensive throw. The most noticeable enhancement however, is the light sourcing - the Playstation can seemingly make light appear from anywhere during the battle. The game has 25 playable fighters who ALL have endings (when you first begin the game only ten playable fighters are available, but for every time you beat the game you receive a new playable character).

If you like fighting games at all, you will love Tekken 2. The graphics and fluid character movement will astound and amaze. The simple control format allows inexperienced players to begin play immediately with minimal effort, and will keep the interest of expert players for months - thanks to the game's complex system of moves and combos. Tekken 2 gives you more than your money's worth.